The Liberal Media Exposed (PDF Report): Formatted,
easy-to-print pages detailing the key results of nearly two dozen
surveys about media bias. The report also includes quotes from top
journalists denying a liberal media bias, plus comments from
journalists acknowledging the problem.How the Media Vote. Surveys of
journalists’ self-reported voting habits show them backing the
Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 1964,
including landslide losers George McGovern, Walter Mondale and
Michael Dukakis. In 2004, a poll conducted by the University of
Connecticut found journalists backed John Kerry over George W. Bush
by a greater than two-to-one margin.
See Section.

Journalists’ Political Views. Compared to their audiences,
journalists are far more likely to say they are Democrats or
liberals, and they espouse liberal positions on a wide variety of
issues. A 2004 poll by the Pew Research Center for The People & The
Press found five times more journalists described themselves as
“liberal” as said they were “conservative.” See Section.

How the Public Views the Media. In increasing numbers, the viewing
audiences recognize the media’s liberal tilt. Gallup polls have
consistently found that three times as many see the media as “too
liberal” as see a media that is “too conservative.” A 2005 survey
conducted for the American Journalism Review found nearly two-thirds
of the public disagreed with the statement, “The news media try to
report the news without bias,” and 42 percent of adults disagreed
strongly. See Section.

Admissions of Liberal Bias. A number of journalists have admitted
that the majority of their brethren approach the news from a liberal
angle. During the 2004 presidential campaign, for example,
Newsweek’s Evan Thomas predicted that sympathetic media coverage
would boost Kerry’s vote by “maybe 15 points,” which he later
revised to five points. In 2005, ex-CBS News President Van Gordon Sauter
confessed he stopped watching his old network: “The unremitting
liberal orientation finally became too much for me.” See Section

Denials of Liberal Bias. Many journalists continue to deny the
liberal bias that taints their profession. During the height of
CBS’s forged memo scandal during the 2004 campaign, Dan Rather
insisted that the problem wasn’t his bias, it was his anybody who
criticized him. “People who are so passionately partisan politically
or ideologically committed basically say, ‘Because he won’t report
it our way, we’re going to hang something bad around his neck and
choke him with it, check him out of existence if we can, if not make
him feel great pain,’” Rather told USA Today in September 2004.
“They know that I’m fiercely independent and that’s what drives them
up a wall.” See
Section.

Evidence of Bias in News Coverage. The Media Research Center
continuously reports on instances of the liberal bias in the
mainstream media. Daily
BiasAlerts offer a regular roundup of the
latest instances of biased reporting, while our
NewsBusters blog
allows Web users to post their own reactions. Media Reality Check
fax reports showcase important stories that the news media have
distorted or ignored, and several times each year the MRC publishes
Special Reports offering in-depth documentation of the media’s bias
on specific issues.